Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Today my friend Meghan sent me a link to a story about how her alma mater, Ole Miss, is pretty close to establishing Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars as its new mascot. This is A) totally awesome and B) got me thinking about my history with mascots.

It should not surprise any of you that I went to a high school represented by a monkey dressed as a pimp.

Well, that’s not really true. The real mascot was a Trojan warrior dude’s disembodied head. Lame! Also, having a Trojan as a high school mascot is basically like having a nipple as the mascot; we may not have known much about Trojans, but the mere allusion to sex was enough to send us into breathless adolescent hysterics. (Special belated apologies go out to my gym teacher, Mr. Hyman. Our anatomical education was your downfall.)

Anyway, since the Trojan was both lame and latex-y, at some point my high school started a tradition in which each graduating class got to choose its own mascot, which was generally a pun on some piece of pop culture. Previous classes had chosen Karate Squid, Codfather, Fight Cub, Quantum Sheep, Pinball Lizard, Habeas Porpoise (oh, yes, we were nerds), and Apocalypse Cow. Although my school was a magnet school full of freaks and geeks, my class had a reputation as a giant pain in the ass, the kinds of kids who smoked pot on the high school grounds and had unchaperoned make-out parties when we weren’t busy studying the Byzantine Empire, so naturally we had to be a little bit bad. We chose as our mascot “Chimp Daddy*.”

"Bulldogs is bitches, yo."

This was a pun on “Pimp Daddy,” but lucky for us our teachers and advisors didn’t make the connection and approved the choice. A few months later, we all received little stuffed chimp dolls wearing sunglasses and gold chains. During a pep rally in the gym (we didn’t have many pep rallies, as we had no football team) we performed a song set to the lyrics of Heavy D’s remix of “Big Daddy.” Some choice lines:

Drivin’ in your Caddy, you can be my chimp daddyTake it slowly... monkey, hold me

He’s the flyest monkey from the north to the southEverybody knows he’s a bad—shut yo mouth!**

**This means MOTHERFUCKER.

Needless to say, when I arrived at Wesleyan the next year and found out we had the gayest mascot ever, a cardinal, I got nostalgic for the good old days of singing about chimpanzees who carry canes and lord over prostitutes.

*I still mourn the loss of runner-up contender Lambo. A lamb with a bandana and an M60 would have been so precious.

I got stuck with a boring Braves mascot for both HS and University. They've had to tone that down in recent years though as portraying a native American in full ceremonial garb is offensive. Or maybe it's that the mascot is being used for a crappy HS and crappy college...not sure.

Lame? My college mascot: a beaver. The women's sports teams, then, OH YES THEY ARE, the Lady Beavers. They win half their games every season because their opponents are exhausted and oxygen deprived from laughing so hard. Some things never stop being snicker-worthy, even after Jr. High.

I'll see your pimp chimp and raise you a little person: my high school's mascot was a midget, and it still is. Seriously.

Legend has it that back in the day, the guys on the basketball team were all very short, but they were excellent basketball players. They beat every team they'd play, even the ones who towered over them, hence the name The Mighty Midgets.

Luckily, since the school is located in the middle of nowhere and there are no actual little people within a 200 mile radius, they have flown under the LPA (Little People of America)'s radar.

We were the Chiefs and Chiefettes...which got painted on our travelling bus (that we rode on to all our athletic events) as, and I quote "Cheif and Chiefettes"

Misspelling your mascot AND de-pluralizing is not the way to strike fear into the hearts of your foes. We were often referred to as the "Thiefs" which A) was grammatically disgusting B) made the people saying it sound like they had a speech impediment and C) was oddly appropriate for numerous reasons.

I too was a Trojan for four years of high school. I had just moved to Indiana from South Carolina, and once I told all of my SC friends about this, well, I'm sure you could imagine how many condoms were sent to me in the mail..

I actually played our mascot in High School - we were the Wolverines (look it up - I grew up in Wyoming). I was Wally Wolverine during football season - it was a blast to be in a head-to-toe red fur costume - made me feel invisible and I was a crazy woman! Nearly got expelled for dancing with the cross-county rival's Tiger during half-time and bothering the marching band.

From the moment I found your blog I vowed to become your overly familiar super fan (which is, sadly, my thing)and feel it's my duty as said superfan from above, to tell you how much I LOVE your sense of humour and writing.

If you were ever at the supermarket and bumped into me (because I'm there, like, a lot) I would TOTALLY discover you.

Thanks for brightening my day! I love your wit and writing style. Did you go to school in Eureka (SyFy show, not town)?...lol...wish I could look back at my high school days with anything but horror.Peace & love always, Jeff

There should be a white bar that runs down the center of the screen. If you are just seeing the background it means the page is slow to load. Wait a few minutes and it should be legible. If that doesn't work for some reason you can always read it through my RSS feed instead:

Not sure what happened to my chimpdaddy doll, but I still have the t-shirt. And I thought we were the hawks? At least, that's what was on the swim team speedos. Purple speedos with a big gold hawk plastered across the butt. Go Hunter!